Anika’s 3rd birthday

Our princess Anika turned 3 yesterday and it was a special day for her.  We haven’t gotten together with the family for a while so we had everyone over for dinner and cake.  Mark and Audrey, Kjell and Jess, and Judith all came and Ani was so excited about her birthday party.  She knew a lot more about birthdays because Kade just had his a month ago so she was way into it this year.  Anika loves butterflies so I made her a butterfly birthday cake.  Not exactly professional looking but it was alright and she really liked it.  Instead of party hats we had princess crowns for the kids and even Kade was all game wearing it and being a part of the princess kind of a birthday.  Ani was also super excited to get presents and every time she started to open one she would say “Whatever can it be?” which is a line from one of her books where a little girl opens a present.  She got some cute clothes, a cross necklace from Judith, a really great winter jacket from nanna and papa, wooden food that you can cut, a tea pot set and a nail polish set from Ehren.  I think it will take a while for her to share the new toys with Emily and other friends without a fight.  It was just a fun time for us to watch her get all excited about her day.  She is growing up so quick and I can’t believe how much more mature she’s getting.

Ani is all girl and loves girly plays, girly clothes, purses and she loves to paint/color and do art projects.  It is fun for me because I was such an opposite of her.  I was a big tom boy growing up, wearing my brothers’ clothes and I hated when mom would make me wear a dress.  I hated coloring and crafts and just wanted to play sports stuff with my brothers.  Now in my “old age” I’m more appreciative of this girliness Ani brings me and it makes me remember to do different things with her than the boys.  It can be a little frustrating for me to watch Ani in physical play because she is such a girl.   When I was little I used to be offended if someone thought I couldn’t play soccer, ice skate, bike or run as fast as boys and I’d be proving them wrong the next minute.  So it is a little funny that Anika is that girl.  She runs like a girl, throws like a girl, and is just really weak.  I don’t mean it in a bad way and I love her just as she is, but I have to keep reminding myself that some things are a lot harder for her than our boys.  To be fair, a lot of it comes from Ani’s delayed motor skills which we worked and worked on this last year with a physical therapist and now she improved enough that she doesn’t need it anymore.  I think she had to get over some of the fear of balancing and stuff and now she’s doing great.  She still has a lot of fun running around with the kids and even if she would not pick playing catch she will eagerly do it because that’s what the other kids want to do.   Ani is very social and loves being with other kids, especially other girls.  Her and Emily (her cousin) have become such good playmates since I started watching her during the day and now if Emily is not here Anika misses her.  They are a bit of opposites from each other but somehow they get along great and love doing things together.  Growing up I spent a lot of time with my cousin Saci who’s the same age as me and we became inseparable.  It is such a special relationship when you don’t have a sister.  I miss her a lot and wish we could hang out like the old times.

Anyway, this last year Anika has changed so much.  It’s probably because of the interaction with other kids but she is expressing herself so much better now.  It is so nice to be able to have little conversations with her and a deepening relationship.  It feels like the older she gets the closer we are and I love that.  She also loves her daddy time and I know it’s special to Ehren and he really cherishes his little girl.  Of course, we do get reminded from time to time of all that estrogen in her because of her screaming and little outbursts and they make me think it’s just preparation for the teenage hormones that are coming.   All in all, I feel very blessed to have a daughter to share our life with and am looking forward to what God has in store for her as she grows.

Ani’s room makeover

So I decided to give Ani a bedroom makeover which I had in mind for a long time but finally decided to just take a weekend and do it.  It was fun and something I really love doing, I just wished the kids weren’t around because it took a long time to finish.  I was hand painting the circles on one part of the wall and really that part took way longer than I expected because the orange peel on our wall made it super hard to do sharp lines.  So I had to keep repainting the circles until I was ok with them and then I got to the point when I was thinking: man, this is too many circles, maybe I should cover some up.   But a few friends who saw it discouraged me from covering some up so I’m holding off on that.  I first started with painting the whole room green and just that was a huge change because her walls were very light lavender before.  I just was not happy with that color from the beginning and it seemed like too many shades of blue in our house so green was a great choice to add something different.  At first I was scared because it seemed like a really bold green since the color before that was so light, but now I just love that green and it goes so well with her white furniture, door, windows and stuff.  All the colors came together so nicely, like I envisioned them in my head so I am very pleased with it.   I don’t think our almost 3 year old honestly cares what her room looks like but overall all the kids love the circles and a more cheery room.  I think what made me want to do it now is that we are spending a lot more time in there with the kids I watch during the day and I wanted a more fun room for them to be in.  I also have plans for Kade’s and Kason’s room, but that will have to wait a while.  I’m not changing their wall color, just adding some horizontal stripes but that should look nice.

painting the circles, milimeter by milimeter

finished

Ani on her bed. She looks so small on the queen size bed :)

the Fair

I guess the small town kids’ highlight of the summer is the county fair.  It lasts for 5 days, starts with a parade, and there are rides every day, farm animals to check out, horse riding competitions, bull riding, demolition derby, etc…, and of course the greasiest food you can imagine.  Truly, I only go for the kids.  We made it to the parade with friends on Wednesday night and it was so cold we had to wear sweatshirts.  I was still cold though and looking around there were a lot of people covered with winter blankets.  What can I say, every year we get shorter and shorter summers.  This was Ani’s first year when she really understood that she was getting candy and was so excited to pick them up.  It was funny how scared she was of all the blow-up costumes but the huge loud trucks didn’t bother her at all.  On Friday night Ehren had to help out at the church so I took all 3 kids to the fair, just to look at the animals that time.  Kade and Ani loved watching the animals but Kason was not that amused.  He wanted to get out of the stroller with all his might and finally when I couldn’t keep him in there any more without him screaming his head off we had to leave.  So that’s why I don’t attempt to take him with us to many things other than parks where he can run free.  Even a 15 minute shopping trip at a store is too much for him and he’s getting all antsy to run away.  Anyway, Saturday I promised Kade we’d go to the fair again so he could go on some rides.  It was great to see he had such a fun time, he could have been there for hours and hours but with Anika being so tired and bored out of her mind we had to leave after about 3 hours.  I’m kicking myself for not taking a picture of her before we left – covered with black dirt from head to toes.  First I took both of them on a merry-go-round and I had both arms around Anika so she wouldn’t be scared, but she still cried the whole ride and wanted to get off.  So after that I didn’t attempt anything else with her except the little train and she wanted to do it over and over so at least she liked something.  Otherwise she had to just keep waiting with me for Kade to get done with one ride after another so of course she was bored and started playing with the black gravel that was everywhere.  We did go look at all the animals again and the kids loved it.  Anika is such an animal lover and she went right in with the goats and was petting them all.  We also bought a couple of greasy treats like mini doughnuts and it was really funny because Anika took one bite of it and spit it out.  That shows how much we eat doughnuts.   Kade made up for her though and finished them off.  It is just crazy how that stuff tires you out though.  I was ready to crash, but then had to go home and make some home-made pizzas for our friends who came over for dinner and we played their wii for a while, which Kade really enjoyed.  Ehren and I got into the car racing a little also, crashing into everyone and I really beat him in tennis.   I just wish I was that good in real life tennis.  So it was a good and once again very busy weekend.  We got together with some other friends on Sunday afternoon and the dads played soccer with the kids.  It was so cute and fun for them, I really wish people around here got together more to just play soccer, volleyball or whatever.  If kids in Slovakia had all those fields set up like we do they would never be empty for long.

at the parade

picking up candy

Ani trying to eat one already

some girls sport

an example of what Anika was scared of. She just ran to me so I couldn’t get a picture of her.

another “scary” thing

Anika’s favorite ride

Anika’s big trip

Ani and I have managed the trip to the cities and of course it wasn’t without the stress.  First, on the way down when we were almost at Ehren’s aunt’s place the van broke down.  It went totally dead while I was waiting for the train to go by and my phone wasn’t working either.  The van has had some trouble before with running when I would come to a stop, but at least I was able to start it up again before.  It was pretty cold outside and freezing rain was falling down so I was not going to drag Anika out and walk a mile to the next place.  Luckily there were a lot of cars passing by and a nice guy stopped to help.  He jumped the van and it got me to Grace and Kevin’s house, but every time we would turn off the key it would not start up again.  This was on a Saturday afternoon so not much we could do and our doctor’s appointment was on Monday morning, uptown Minneapolis.  We quick called Grace’s mechanic who lives close by and he was able to fix the van on Sunday afternoon so that was great.  But when I drove it Sunday night it started dying again when I stopped so it’s not exactly fixed yet.  It was a little bit nervewracking to drive uptown Minneapolis when the van could die at any stop light, but we got to the Children’s Hospital fine and on time.

Anika did awesome and we were at the hospital for almost 5 hours so it was a while.  We had 3 different appointments, first was an ear specialist who determined Anika’s hearing is just fine – in the normal range.  Then off we went to a speech therapist and she spent quite some time with Anika, playing with her and testing her to see how much she knows.  Overall she was impressed by how many words Ani knows and she thought Anika doesn’t have any problems with her language skills.  I was telling her how Anika just started talking a lot all of a sudden, especially the last few months so we really started to be a lot less concerned.  She said that happens sometimes when kids just start to say everything in a short time and she thinks some of her vocabulary can’t keep up with perfecting the pronounciation because she is starting to say so much in a short time.  But most of the words are very clear to understand so that’s good.  Then after a short break we met with the developmental specialist who pretty much evaluated everything about Ani and we went through the whole history since she was a baby.  I’m not going to go into all the details, but basically he determined that there is absolutely nothing wrong or off with her brain development.  He said she is a very bright girl and has a great personality (very happy and willing) because she did great during the whole appointment for being 2.  I was actually thinking going into this that she would probably make several scenes with her tantrums so I was very pleasantly surprised.  But the doctor said there is something going on with Anika’s muscles overall because all the little things are leading to that conclusion.  Things like her not being able to jump off the ground with both feet, not running very well, having a bad posture, her eye being off and some other things.  He noticed she drulled a little and I thought it’s from her eye teeth coming in but he thought it could be that her tounge has a weak muscle and that could be why she had problems sucking as a baby.  So he is recommending an MRI to see if that will show anything abnormal that would affect her muscle development, but he thought it may not show anything.  We’ll have to go to Fargo for that and Anika has to be put to sleep.  After that we will go to an occupational therapist to see if Anika qualifies for therapy, he wasn’t sure since she may not be bad enough to need it.  But maybe they can give us some exercises or something to do.  He also suggests a good pediatric eye doctor but that’s not a rush and if there is a weak muscle in the eye they do surgeries for that later.  I really liked the doctor and he really listened to everything that was going on with Anika.

So that’s all that happened in Minneapolis.  We went home right after that and Anika did really good in the van.  I am so proud of her and seems like she won’t stop talking ever since we’re home.

Ehren and the boys did great too.  It was the longest I’ve ever been apart from Kason and I missed him quite a bit.  His first 2 teeth on the bottom came through so he was a lot fussier than usual but Ehren managed them like a pro.  Plus, he got to bond with Kason more and he seems to really love being with his daddy now, although he always has.

Winter activities

Here is what keeps us busy during the day when we can’t go outside because it’s too cold.  Kade and Anika play downstairs pretty well for a long time so it’s always nice to send them there when I’m making dinner.  And Kason just likes watching the two of them play.